


Plate Tectonics

by VivWiley



Series: Ancient Elements [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:43:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VivWiley/pseuds/VivWiley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do we measure time, and how do we know where we belong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plate Tectonics

Millions of years ago, when the earth was forming--heating and cooling in vast, unimaginable expenditures of energy--the continents were not separate. They were conjoined, whole. In elementary school, my teacher demonstrated the way that if you could shift the current landmasses around you could see how parts of Africa would tuck neatly against South America. Although I was young, I still remember the strange wrenching feeling in my stomach--a sympathetic pain at the force that had rent one land from another. I thought it must be like a family being ripped in two. It was a pain that was familiar.

Even after the continents had drifted apart, there were landbridges. Small spits of land that defied continental drift. That stubbornly tried to hang on, in one small place or another, until they too disappeared and we were left isolated in our own lonely lands for so many years.

Eventually the continents were joined again by ships and then planes and by the bold adventuring spirits of explorers -- both good and bad outcomes to that -- but our loneliness remained. We humans were lost in the knowledge that what had once been joined was torn apart, and we couldn't ever really be whole again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Tonight I hold her.

It is such a simple thing. And it is everything.

It is cool here tonight. The campfire on the beach keeps us warm against the chill ocean breezes, but not so warm that we don't need to huddle together, sharing a heat that is only partly the result of our physical closeness.

Another case, another chase, another mystery solved, and a mutual agreement that we needed time that wasn't defined by the bureaucratic strictures and structure of Washington, and so we stayed here for the weekend. Away. Together.

Such a simple thing.

_In my end is my beginning._

We are back where we started. 

On a beach, with the ocean in front of us, and the world seeming to wait, holding its breath to see what will happen next. Only this time I know. I know how this evening will end, and where we will go from here. As much as I can know anything, I know this. I will be with her. And she with me.

We are surrounded by unfamiliar elements: the crackle and spark of an open fire that blazes up and out into the night air, the sound and scent and sentience of the ocean just beyond, the looming cliffs behind us. Out here on the Pacific Coast, it feels like we are on the edges of the known world. Isolated, insulated, at least for a time from all the petty annoyances of time and obligations and paperwork.

The cliff behind us rises dark and brooding up into the night--sweeping lines of black stone that contain the records of time and the mysteries of life trapped and hidden between their tightly compressed layers. The edge of a continent--eroded now, by time and wind and water, and yet still bearing the form of what it once was. The imprint of the place it was once joined to, and from which it was wrenched away during the vast upheavals of the earth's formation.

I pull Scully a little closer to me, feeling the soft curve of her back as it fits against the lines of my chest. Wrapping my arms a little tighter around her, pressing my legs along hers. 

She seems lost in the fire--her gaze trapped in the flames that dance and spark and pop with a murky crispness in the night. Her silence is warm, too, encompassing, not excluding. We do not need words here and now. Her hands running softly up and down my forearms are all the answers I have ever sought.

She is both near and far away from me. So close I can smell the cardamom and vanilla scent of her beneath the smoke of the fire, and yet, I know her mind is leagues from here, floating in some quiet current of contemplation and memory.

I slip into my own stream of memory...

Last night, in my room. The two of us, wound up from the adrenaline rush of catching the killer, but also so tired from the case. Weary of evil and the loss of innocents. 

We had suffered through the obligatory final dinner with the local police, and finally escaped to our motel. As soon as the cruiser that had dropped us off cleared the parking lot, I heard Scully's knock on my room door. 

She was still wearing her trenchcoat as she drifted with languid purpose through my door. I could see fatigue written on every line of her face, underscored by a glimmering purpose. She took my breath away.

Using nothing but her gaze, she froze me into place as she closed the door and purposefully discarded her coat, a casual puddle left on the floor behind her as she advanced on me with the slow determination of lioness culling the weakest gazelle from the herd. You know all my weaknesses, Scully, simply take me, make it quick, be merciful.

Her hands reached for me--sweet and sure. Gentle, but firm. Brooking no arguments, no denials. Not that I would offer any resistance. I surrendered to her pull, her gentle tugging on my lapels until our mouths met. And met and clung, and touched, and tasted. 

Kissing Scully is indescribable. It is nothing less than a full commitment of myself, my soul, our souls. She is fierce in this, as she is in all that she does. But there is a special daring in the way she surrenders herself to the force that rages between us. 

When her mouth touches mine--each time--I can almost envision her standing on the edge of cliff and then suddenly hurling herself over the edge. Trusting the living passion that binds us together to keep her from destruction on the rocks and waters below. There is never any hesitation in her in these moments. She leaps into our joining with a joyful abandon that never fails to awe me.

My fingers cradled her face, slowly moving back to tangle in her hair, to caress the fragile bones of her head and neck and shoulders. We were careful with each other last night. Aware of our mutual tiredness, seeking to please one other, to restore each other in this declaration of what we are--together.

Her hands smoothed over my body, knowing, kind, demanding. Long, smooth strokes that aroused and soothed. I found myself trembling and couldn't even find the words to name the reason.

Pragmatic concerns finally broke our kiss--I always forget that oxygen is a necessity. I somehow always believe that I can subsist simply on Scully. 

She looked solemn in the odd, yellow-dim hotel light of my room, but her eyes were ablaze with a fire that rose up from the depths of her soul--the fire of the earth's core, molten, slow-burning, white-hot.

She pushed my jacket back from my shoulders and down my arms, and helped me as I shrugged it off and let it drop, unremarked, to the floor. Then she carefully removed my tie and unbuttoned my shirt. A studied seduction that asked for only my total trust, and belief in her.

It was my turn, fingers rendered suddenly clumsy by the feelings gripping me, fumbling to undo her blouse's buttons, to gently tug the fragile fabric off and away. A quiet humor lit her face as she simply unclasped and shrugged out of her bra by herself.

My hands were no longer clumsy as I reached out to trace her skin, to feel the warm velvet smoothness of her, the delicate architecture of her bones beneath, the sinuous connections of her muscles and tendons moving under my questing fingers. 

Long, languid moments of exploration, of touching and tasting. Lips and hands flowing over territory long since marked by claims of possession. Our bodies melding together, drawn by a gravitational pull that we had tried to deny for too long.

Another endless kiss, and I felt her deft hands undoing my belt, and the quiet passion of the evening began to spark to a different rhythm, a more urgent pull. 

More quickly now, the rest of clothing removed, and we tumbled onto my bed, limbs tangling, breaths mingling in husky laughter that was drowned again by our mouths fusing.

And then she was over me, lowering herself, joining us in a single, fluid movement. Oh God, Scully. Yes, always yes. There are no words for this moment. Ever. There is only us. And yes.

My palms skimmed up her ribcage to gently cradle her breasts, simply holding them, feeling their weight and heft as she moved over me. Her hands covered mine briefly, and then stroked down my arms until she rested them lightly on my chest, just for balance.

For a time, we recaptured the slowness, the unhurried, erotic leisurely pace of the night. She rocked up and back, stroking deliberately--an even steady motion that carried us smoothly forward. Ever forward. I could feel my orgasm beginning to build, the tight, cutting coil of pleasure beginning to unwind in my balls and gut. I could see her matching arousal building in her eyes--an echoing hunger that both fed mine and sharpened it. I could smell us, our mingled scents wrapping around my consciousness, causing me to gasp, trying to take us ever deeper into my lungs.

She whispered my name, "Mulder," and leaned over to kiss me again, and the pleasure swirled upward, past my racing heart. All pretense of languor was swept away in the lust and need and love that washed over me with her honey-dark voice.

"Scully--?"

"Yes," and I rolled us both until she was beneath me, and began to drive into her with an arrhythmic intensity that should have frightened us both, but only drove us more quickly forward.

I felt her tightening around me, and heard her call out, an inarticulate crying of need and need met, and then my own release hit and I was flung into welcome oblivion....

 

The fire pops suddenly, a resin bubble exploding loud and unexpectedly, startling us both. Scully stirs in my arms, bringing me fully back to the present. I wonder what she has been thinking about.

"Mulder?" Her voice in the darkness is soft, but certain.

"Yes?" 

Her hands tighten around mine for a moment, and I can hear her smile. "Nothing. Just, Mulder."

I think, but do not say, "I love you, too." The words are too dangerous, and anyway, she knows.

Silence wraps around us again.

The earth moves through space at thousands of miles per hour--circling the sun, spinning and spinning in its long, elliptical orbit, taking us through all the seasons, moving us in and out of meteor showers, and years and time.

And yet, held here by gravity, and centrifugal force, we don't feel it at all. We are not aware of the motion carrying us through the vast reaches of our galaxy. We don't feel the dizzying whirl of our orbit. We feel nothing at all but the surety that we belong here, that we are anchored to this reality. 

There was a time when I misjudged her. I thought she was stolid, unimaginative, prosaic. I missed her speed, her motion, her long, smooth passes around the sun. Her sure navigation through space. 

It was only much later that I realized that she did make me dizzy--but in a strange grounded way, as though her gravitational pull would both undo me and be the only thing in the universe that could hold me together.

Holding in her my arms last night, holding her on the beach tonight, I now know the truth--I can feel her movements beneath her stillness, can sense the energy that she barely keeps harnessed.

I can barely express, even to myself, what she is to me. 

I spent years adrift--lost, separated from all the others like me--ever in search of something that I couldn't even define. I had distinct quests, I still do, but always I knew that there was something more. Some nameless something else that lay beyond my immediate goals, but which was the thing that would end my searching forever.

I almost didn't realize it when I finally found it. We all spend our lives, I have come to see, in search of something. Trying to reconcile that human sense of loss that is an unconscious echo from the time when we were all joined. When the continents weren't separated. We look for landbridges, and all too often we fall into oceans or canyons when those bridges collapse without warning.

The lucky few, though.....

It has gotten colder. I can feel a small shudder wrack Scully and realize that I am feeling a little cold and stiff.

Ever the practical one, she speaks first, "Ready to go back?" It is not a question I want to answer, because tonight is our last night here. Tomorrow we must return to Washington, and the Bureau and the mad game which is our lives. No, I am not ready to go back.

"Yeah. It is getting sort of cold."

We untangle ourselves and bury the embers of the fire. She starts to take my hand for the walk back across the sand to our hotel, but instead I wrap an arm around her waist and pull her into my side as we turn to go home. The crash-hiss-wash of the waves serenading us as we quietly leave.

As we walk from the beach, I feel the continental shelf of my heart meet hers and the fit is perfect, and we are whole once more.

END

Feedback would be very appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted under author name Mesa (I had WAY too many pseuds back in the day) in March 1999.
> 
> Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the X-files are the property of 1013 Productions and Fox Broadcasting. No infringement is intended.
> 
> Note: This completes the Ancient Elements series. Chronologically it is the fourth, but you do not need to have read the others to understand this.
> 
> This is for Lj users Sharinlilbit, Angstville, who asked, and for Thalia_dmuse whose idea it was. And, of course, my deep gratitude to Meredith, without whom I wouldn't be writing at all.


End file.
